


Back to my Roots

by LetheOblivion



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: AND SHE WONT DIE OKAY, F/F, Her Name is Root, I can't handle that, Root her beginnings and then like her throughout the whole show, but focused on Root, but it will just be the hwole story of Root as I imagined it would be, everything will be from her POV, plus this will be a Shoot fic, this fic will contain murder and voilence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2018-11-03 08:56:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10963911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LetheOblivion/pseuds/LetheOblivion
Summary: The beginnings of the Myth that is Root, and how her story goes. The hacker that can hack into anything, and the hired killer that can kill anyone. The hacker and reformed killer-for-hire (that sometimes still kills) that let someone called Sameen hack her way into her heart.





	1. Show me the Beginning of Root

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone,  
> So I am writing this after having abandoned this fix for almost a year. Sorry!!
> 
> Follow me on Tumblr and ask me anything and everything about this fic or give me prompts. My url is mattie-hawkins 
> 
> I hope to be able to update this fic a few times a week, and if that isnt possible at least once a week.
> 
> notes about this story will be at the end of the chapter

# Chapter One : <//Show.me.the.beginning.of.Root//>

 

 

> _I'm well acquainted with villains that live in my head_  
>  _They beg me to write them so they'll never die when I'm dead_  
>  _And I've grown familiar with villains that live in my head_  
>  _They beg me to write them so I'll never die when I'm dead_
> 
> _I'm bigger than my body_  
>  _I'm colder than this home_  
>  _I'm meaner than my demons_  
>  _I'm bigger than these bones_
> 
>  

She walked around the city, backpack slung over one shoulder. The straps of the backpack were just a little too big for her, so she had to hold on to the one strap that was over her shoulder to prevent it from sliding off her small frame. Her shoes were old and almost fell apart, which would be cause for many girls of her age to be upset. She wasn’t. She was feeling rather accomplished. At just fourteen, almost fifteen, she had been able to cause the murder of the kidnapper of her best friend, that was kidnapped two years prior.

In her eyes, he was just a glitch in the system of humanity. Humanity in her eyes, was a corrupt file that she could fix. People are not designed, which makes them prone to mistakes and corruption. Perfect lines of code that designed perfectly running systems on computers on the other hand were something she greatly admired. She hoped she could one day amount to that level of perfection. Not a flaw in sight, and running perfectly on the commands given to her.

Not that she would follow anyone’s commands. She couldn’t possibly think of anyone’s orders she would ever take. She had been on her own for two years, and it suited her just fine. She had practically been living on her own anyways. She didn’t know who her father was, and didn’t care to find out. Her mother had long forgotten that taking care of a child meant doing something, and her mother’s boyfriend just liked to throw beer bottles at her.

The library had been her sanctum sanctorum. Hanna was always there. Hanna was a whole two years older than she had been and she still wanted to hang out with her. Hanna appreciated her and always smiled at her while she was talking about the latest thing that had caught her interest. Hanna was also hung up on that Oregon game. It was something that had sparked her interest when she was watching Hanna play it, and her eye was caught by a little glitch in the game. After Hanna went home that day she settled behind the computer and it took her just a short while to figure out to use the glitch to her advantage and she beat the game in seconds.

 She looked at the hotel in awe. It was enormous. It had been rather easy hacking into the system of this place and securing a room for herself for a few weeks. Just to figure out her next move. She couldn’t go back home. Not that anyone would even notice that she was gone. She checked in the databases of the police station, and there had been no amber alert out for her in all this time. She found that rather convenient since it meant she didn’t have to try particularly hard at hiding herself from authorities.

She stepped into the hotel and for the first time she became rather conscious of her clothes. They were old, dirty and stolen. This hotel was rather high end, with bad online security. So naturally eyes were drawn to her but she kept walking with a confident gait, straight to the check-in desk. She had to rise to her tiptoes to be visible for the lady behind the desk.

‘Hello, I am here under the name of Frey. My mother placed a reservation a few weeks ago for a suite here? She said I could go ahead and check in for us while she was still working.’ She said and smiled at the lady that looked at her with suspicion. The lady’s eyebrows rose when the reservation checked out and it didn’t take long before Root was handed a key card for her suite, and she was on her way.

Luckily for her people were just as easily hacked as computers. She also had the luck that she looked rather cute with her dark blonde hair and big brown eyes. Though looking back at her clothes, she decided that perhaps she should probably steal some new clothes, because staying here in this hotel for these weeks, and keeping on the same outfit for the entire stay, probably would ring a few alarm bells for some of the staff here.

When she entered her suite she smiled broadly, oh this would do just fine. She took the laptop out of her backpack, the laptop was also stolen of course, and started it up. It wasn’t the best, but after she had tinkered with it a bit and replaced a few parts, it worked just like she wanted it too. And the changes she had made to it made it feel more like it was hers. Something she owned and that nobody could just take from her.

She ordered some simple room service that would suffice in nutrients and would fill her enough to do an entire night of hacking. She already was creating a loyal clientele that liked her style when she hacked someone, or handled jobs for them. It was a steady stream of income she could then use for her online classes. She may have dropped out of school, but that doesn’t mean she should be uneducated.

Plus, she found that learning new things was fun. It kept her alert and it helped her understand the world a bit better with every new little slice of knowledge she got. She was enrolled into several college classes that she could take online. Nobody knew that she wasn’t even old enough to have graduated from high school yet. Nobody in her online business knew she wasn’t even old enough to drive yet. She rather liked it that way. Everyone just knew her as Root. The name she had chosen for herself the same night that Hanna was taken. She wasn’t Samantha Groves anymore. That girl was gone now. She was Root. Hacker and genius if she said so herself.

She particularly loved physics, chemistry and psychology. It taught her a lot. It also helped her understand humans and humanity so much better. It was strange that she didn’t really consider herself a part of humanity anymore. Of course, she was human. That was a fact that couldn’t be avoided, but still. She didn’t feel as if she was like all the others with their flaws and faulty code. She was above that. She knew that even at this young age.

* * *

 

A year later she had grown almost a foot and was suddenly all tall and gangly, because she hadn’t gotten used to her body being this much taller. She was in her third hotel of this month and she was a bit antsy. Someone had tried to hack her. Her fingers ached from the war that had happened between her and the person of the other side of the battle. She had come out of it victorious, but at what cost?

She was certain the person had read some information from her laptop that he or she shouldn’t have. She still carried the laptop around she always had but now that had become a risk. Carrying the same laptop around had been a mistake, and because of her sentimentality over it, someone had learned something about her.

So, she needed to destroy it, and the idea of it alone pained her. She had had this laptop the moment she walked away from home, and had kept it ever since. It was the only form of home she knew, but she couldn’t keep it now. It was her flaw. She had kept something that she shouldn’t have because the flaw of her humanity prevented her from disposing of it as soon as she had been able to get a new one. It disgusted her. She had a flaw, and just like in Greek mythology, it had almost been her fatal flaw. The one that would have meant the end of her.

At least the end of Root. She would have to have chosen a new identity, and that wasn’t something she would have wanted. So that was why right now she was on her way to an electronics store to purchase one of the newest laptops available for her so she could do her work from there.

Once she had her new laptop set up, she ceremoniously burned her old one, she kept the fire going until there was absolutely nothing traceable left. It felt strange, saying goodbye to her home. She had done it before when she lost Hanna though, so it wasn’t her first time. It was, however, the last time she would ever permit herself to have a home ever again. Having roots was a flaw. It meant that people could use something against you, because you cared about something.

From now on, she would buy or steal a new laptop every other month, so she couldn’t be traced back to anything, and if anyone tried to hack her, they would just find useless things that they couldn’t use against her. Nobody would ever be able to find out who she was, if she kept it hidden well enough. From now on she was Root online, the person nobody knew anything about. She would become a legend. A myth that everyone would admire and aspire to be. She would become invincible. Nobody would even know if she was male or female, no one would know her age, no one would know if she even really existed. She would become someone everyone would come to in need of help. And she would be the all-powerful god that could solve anything and everything. 


	2. Show me the first time Root became an Assassin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that it took longer to post  
> My flight was cancelled on saturday and it took me a few days extra to get a flight back.
> 
> Hope you enjoy.

# Chapter two: <//Show.me.the.first.time.Root.became.an.assassin//>

 

> I'll walk down the mall  
>  Stand over by the wall  
>  Where I can see it all  
>  Find out who you call  
>    
>  I will drive by your house  
>  And if the lights are all down  
>  Then I'll see who's around
> 
> One way or another, I'm gonna find you  
>  I'm gonna get you

 

She was twenty-one, and she was well on her way at becoming the myth she wanted to be, when she got another request for help. She sat on a bench at a bus stop with a laptop on her lap. She had bought it yesterday, well stole it very nicely without even stealing anything else. The store owner wasn’t too bad of a person so she took a bit of mercy on him and just stole the laptop, and nothing else. Which was incredibly nice of her, she thought.

Root had now fully grown into her body and she knew she looked good in it. She saw how other people looked at her. She had become better at getting clothes and not looking like a homeless person. She found out she favoured black skinny jeans, simple shirts and a black leather jacket. The clothes were something that made her feel that bit more confident.

She sat cross-legged on the bench with the laptop in her lap and as she read the request together with the money the person offered for it made her heart beat a little faster. Yes, she had killed people indirectly before, but never directly. Never with her own hands, but she had always wondered what it would feel like to see the life leave a person.

She agreed but said she wanted half of the money upfront and the other half after she had killed this man that her client wanted gone. She looked around to make sure that no one was looking at her or her screen, because accepting to murder someone, and a stranger reading that would not be a good thing. That was another thing that greatly annoyed her about humans; their tendency to mind other people’s business.

She only minded someone’s business when that person or their company needed to be hacked for someone. It was a simple enough business, that thrived on people feeling threatened by others, or on people having the need to evoke suspicion so their targets would become hounded by the media.

It was funny to watch their worlds burn as she just entered a few simple lines of code that would create a virus. Their whole online private life would become a little less private, whilst her virus posted it all on the internet.

Now she needed to plan how to kill someone, though. That required time and a bit more privacy than sitting at a bus stop hoping that no one would mind her. She hacked into the servers of the hotel that was nearby and got herself a room for a week. That should be long enough to prepare. If she could get other people killed, doing the killing herself shouldn’t be that difficult.

She set her laptops up on her hotel room and then went about planning the actual murder she was going to commit. It would pay her quite a handsome fee. Not that she particularly cared about money, but it made her life just a bit easier. She looked at her rerouted bank account and smiled. Half of the fee was already there, which meant she could use that to upgrade the arsenal that she had.

Before this she only ever carried a 9mm Glock 26, it was small simple to carry with her, and with enough power to do harm to someone if needed. For now, she had only ever shot it at cans filled with soda. She liked it when the liquid would spray out when she hit one. It was good target practice at the very least.

Her small gun wouldn’t really do much good now, unless she wanted to get close to the target and only shoot him. Perhaps she could poison him. Make it look like a simple heart attack. Or poison him with potassium, since the levels of potassium rise in the human body after the heart stops beating and the body deteriorates. It would be close to untraceable, but she didn’t really like the idea of the man getting off this easily. Plus, her client has asked if she could extract some information from the man before killing him. Simply killing him wouldn’t be enough. Torture would probably be a better way to go at it.

She had to get up close to do that, because apparently the man hated storing valuable information online or on his computer. Idiot. So, her whole plan of not getting close to him was one of dreams and not reality. She couldn’t just get squeamish about it now. She could do this, and not just live behind a computer drifting from place to place to stay undetected.

She logged into one of the new laptops she had procured just hours before sitting at the bus stop and researched some more effective torturing techniques that would result in the man spilling the secrets that needed to be spilled. During her research session, she put on Bach’s Cello Suite No.1 and prepared for an all-nighter. She was surprised to learn of all the ways that one could torture someone.

Most studies conclude that pain is a subjective, but that during studies about the pain threshold and pain tolerance, men tried to act tougher when the one doing the tests was female. Hopefully that meant she would be able to have some fun with the man before he dished out the information her client wanted.

Perhaps she would first just threaten him a bit before she would really torture the person, although the thought of possibly driving an electric drill through someone’s hand sounded quite intriguing. Would one be more willing to talk when their hand was impaled by steel? Or would the guy talk after she shattered his kneecaps with a hammer. Maybe using a taser on him a few times would clear up his mind and make him spill.

A smile grew on Root’s face as she thought about all the things she could do to the man to get the information, and found that she was getting rather excited about the prospect of torture. It seemed like a good fate for the dirt that was to be her victim.

* * *

 

After a week of stalking her would-be victim, she knew the ins and outs of his routine, and felt that she was ready to strike. Her client was getting impatient, but she didn’t really care too much about that. She herself was growing just a little impatient too. After all the planning she put into this, and after all the programming she had to postpone to properly do this, she wants this done as much as the person paying her for it.

She is not, however, too impatient to rush anything. That wouldn’t be a good way of handling this. She followed him to the bar of the far-too-expensive hotel and sat down next to him. She had put on a dress this time. Put her hair up, which she loathed doing but it made her look fancier, and she had put on high heels. She flirted with him, and giggled at his jokes that weren’t remotely funny. She observed his behaviour and responded to it in kind.

An hour, using the taser thrice, dragging a body around and the use of four zip ties later she had the man contained to a chair in a room she had made as soundproof as she was able to. The man was coming to and looked at her in complete and utter fear. Root gave him a predatory smile in return.

She found that she had rather enjoyed using the taser. It was easy and powerful. Plus seeing how the body seized up, unable to do anything but crumple to the ground, was rather satisfying after two hours of bad jokes and horrible come-ons.

He didn’t want to talk yet though, so she fired up an electric drill and first held it close to his face, whilst she threatened him.

‘If you want to keep your face intact, I suggest you talk now. This will be fun for me either way, so I don’t really mind how hard you’re going to play it. But the thing is; the faster you talk, the less your death is going to hurt.’ Root said with a grin and his eyes got impossibly wider as she saw sweat beginning to bead on his forehead.

He shook his head though, not wanting to relay the information that she wanted to have.

In a quick and unexpected move, she ran the drill through his hand and the sound he made in response sounded inhumane. Root laughed as he started to curse at her and scream at her. As if that would even remotely help his situation.

‘Look, you’re going to die either way. You have the choice how much it is going to hurt and how long that hurt will take.’ Root tried again, her voice just as calm, if not a bit on the mocking side as she looked at him. He whimpered in pain as she saw the cogs in his head turning.

Forty-five minutes later, she had changed out of her blood covered clothes and was back into her normal, comfortable outfit as the building behind her burnt to the ground. She had hurriedly put all her contaminated clothes and other evidence like the laptop she used into a bag. She filled the bag with rocks before throwing it into the Hudson.

She sent the information to her client on a burner phone and minutes afterwards she got the rest of the money wired to her off-shore bank account.

It had felt strange. Taking a life with her own hands. Seeing his body grow limp. She thought she would love seeing the light leave his eyes, but she didn’t really enjoy it too much. Not that she felt even close to bad about it, but she just felt… Well indifferent perhaps.

She did decide that she wanted to keep most of her work to hacking, and arranging murders if necessary, but taking lives directly would be something only on special request. Perhaps to loyal clients, or when she really felt like shooting someone. For now, she just felt like returning to one of her laptops and getting on the next flight to nowhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> Leave a comment behind if you have any suggestions or just stating your opinion on the story
> 
> I think I will be able to update around sunday :)


	3. Show me Root

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for being two days too late  
> I just got hired for a job in the summer so i suddenly found myself with no spare time to write...  
> anyways, there is violence in this chapter, so be warned I guess.  
> I threw in a few words in my native language because why not? (translation in the notes at the end of the Chapter :)
> 
> Hope you will enjoy this chapter! already working on the next one.

# Chapter three: <//Show.me.Root//>

> Falling too fast to prepare for this  
> Tripping in the world could be dangerous  
> Everybody circling, it's vulturous  
> Negative, nepotist

She found that she rather liked staying in spaces where nobody really belongs. Liminal spaces where everybody only stops for a while to get where they want to be. These places are the closest thing to home she will probably ever have, and she likes it that way. 

No place to keep her bound to somewhere where she must return. Her latest assassination took her all the way to Japan. It was rather interesting there. The longest delays she has seen there were about ten seconds. Ten seconds of waiting more than people expected to, and they still apologize for the delay. She doesn't really like the liminal spaces there. They’re too fast.

She is now laying down with her eyes closed at Heathrow Airport. All flights until nine in the morning are cancelled, so people hoping to catch a late-night plane to wherever they needed to be are now either angrily shouting at some Heathrow employee that can't do anything about the situation, or they have given up at being angry and are now attempting to sleep.

Root doesn't really bother with sleeping. Observing the people here is much more fascinating and thus, she is watching how some people dug some sweaters out of their bags, and how they are trying to use it as a pillow and as a blanket at the same time, whilst others pace and frantically try to call someone that is waiting for them in another country.

She was supposed to go to Amsterdam, following some American business woman someone wanted dead. Rather a shame to kill a woman that good looking without having some fun with her first, but this delay has made it impossible for her to play. The client wouldn't pay her if she didn't meet the deadline. Not that she couldn't steal the money from him anyways, but it was a matter of principles. Keeping her legendary name.

Nobody knew who she was. She had eliminated every single possibility for a leak of her information, and her digital footprint was non-existent. She loved it that way. Revelled in it every single time she found out someone tried to find out who she was. Every time she found out someone had taken out a hit on her. It was amusing to watch them try.

Someone was currently shouting at someone else in French and it was quite the show to watch. She got lost in listening to all the people around her and watching them. They were walking bad code. Every single one of the shouting people proved it. Every person of staff that went out of their way to avoid the passengers so they wouldn’t have to help proved it.

The hatred towards people that had started festering inside of her since Hanna had only grown. Every single day dealing with people proved her point just again and again.

* * *

 

Twelve hours later and shots were being fired everywhere, a bullet flying just an inch away from her face. Her split lip was bleeding and her eye was starting to swell. Somebody had set up a trap for the woman she was supposed to kill, or perhaps the trap was for her. She wasn’t so sure. The feeling of the fists pummelling against her lanky body were still very fresh on her mind as she fired her own guns when a short silence lulled. She had waited until they ran out of bullets before she would even waste her own.

She had been stupid enough to forget extra ammo, and thus she had to do with the bullets her guns already possessed. She had been too arrogant she was starting to realize. Perhaps it would cost her her live.

This was the first time a hit had ever gone wrong. The six times before this they were relatively easy to do, and she never got hurt. Didn’t get shot, and she had never quite received a beating like the one she had endured forty minutes ago. Her ribs were aching and she was sure some of them were cracked, as she felt her spine throb certain a large bruise was forming there as well.

Her eye was slowly swelling shut, since she hasn’t had the opportunity yet to put ice on it as to calm her bruised flesh and to stop it from swelling. She hoped she could just shoot straight for a bit longer. She didn’t need to be able to see well after she had killed the people here, she just needed her sight for a few more minutes

Shots rang through the air as she stalked away from her hiding place and towards the men she needed to kill. It took her four more shots, and dodging a few bullets before she had the two men down. The air felt loaded with every shot that had been fired, and every hit her body had taken. Her arm was stinging and burning terribly, she hadn’t noticed before because of the adrenaline rushing through her body. She had gotten shot. Crap.

At least her target was dead as well. No survivors. Nobody to tell their bosses who she was exactly. Not one survivor to tell her secrets. But she had paid for it. She had been arrogant going in. laughing at people that tried to catch her, and tried to run her into a trap.

She had seen herself so above everyone else that she hadn’t considered the day that she might be caught in a trap. After she witnessed that most of the shots that were fired were in her direction, instead of the direction of her target. She felt anger and rage pulse through her blood as she made her way to the nearest bar and ordered something to drink. She got strange looks, a few looked terrified, but she paid them no mind.

Her arm probably needed stitches or at least it needed to be looked at. Instead she downed the alcohol that burned all the way down her throat. She scrunched her face up at the bitter taste it left behind, and just ordered another drink. She had obviously gotten no money from this hit and it left her feeling stupid and played.

Someone had bested her at the game she saw herself as the master of, and it made her feel small. She hadn’t felt small since the moment she lost Hanna for good. It made her feel on edge as she tapped her fingers against the wood of the bar. Her black painted nails tapping out a rushed rhythm that she couldn’t help. She hated how her body betrayed her with a nervous tick like this.

Her eye had completely swollen shut now and she probably looked horrible. Her ribs smarted every time she drew in a breath and released it again. And her arm that was hit limply hung whilst it was dripping blood onto the floor. She was almost waiting for the moment the person behind the bar would kick her out for making too much of a mess.

After she had had three drinks and had created a small puddle of blood next to the bar stool she had hoisted herself on to, she was kicked out. Though they did have the courtesy to call her a cab. She wracked her brain for the address of a doctor she could blackmail into helping her without reporting her gunshot wound. She knew doctors normally were supposed to report them whenever they came in. She knew no one here in Amsterdam that she could blackmail, perhaps she should just limited herself to hits inside of the US again.

Maybe she could find a nurse that would help her no questions asked if she played the role of damsel in distress well enough.

She asked the cab driver to drop her off at the nearest hospital and the driver looked at her with probably a hint of disgust that she was dripping blood all over his backseat. She couldn’t care less. The drive took eight minutes with traffic in Amsterdam as horrible as it usually was. She could have easily just walked and it would have probably been faster.

The driver said something in Dutch under his breath _godverdomme bloed over mijn hele auto_ , but her knowledge of that language was limited. But it sounded angry. She paid with a wad of cash, probably about a few hundred euros, which made the cab driver look at her in surprise. She stumbled into the hospital and tried her best to look as pathetic as possible and a nurse hurried over to her.

‘Mevrouw wat is er gebeurd?!’ The nurse asked with panic in her voice but she didn’t understand a word of it.

‘I’m sorry, please could you help me?’ She asked in the most terrified and broken voice she could muster and the nurse nodded quickly.

‘What happened to you miss?’ The nurse asked in an accented voice, and Root explained how she was pulled into an alley and beat by a group of men, before she passed out. Told the nurse she woke up hours later in the alley and she didn’t know how she got the wound in her arm.

‘I don’t feel so well…’ Root then said breathlessly and she passed out. Probably the blood loss, and the trauma her body went through.

* * *

 

Few hours later she woke up and found that she was mostly patched up. The nurse looking at her wide eyed that she woke up already.

‘We expected you to be out at least until tomorrow.’ The nurse said softly and quickly came to her side to check her vitals. Root grew annoyed. She only needed to be patched up, not be admitted into a damned hospital in a foreign country. ‘We checked you in as Jane Doe, since we don’t know your name.’ The nurse said with a lilt to her voice as if it was a question to prompt Root into telling her name.

Instead she muttered a _sorry_ under her breath before she punched the nurse in the jaw with her good arm, just the right spot so she would knock the woman out. She then pulled the IVs out of her skin with a slight hiss of pain. She pocketed a lot of the good painkillers and stole the clothes that were probably owned by the sleeping person in the room next to hers. Her own were bloody and ripped. A shame really, she had liked that jacket a lot.

She walked as casually as she could to the exit of the hospital.

Three hours later she was back at the airport and ready to go back to the US. People still looked at her strangely, probably the big black eye on her face that was still close to swollen shut. But with enough of the painkillers in her system she wasn’t bothered by the pain too much.

Whilst waiting for her flight, she opened her laptop and through a VPN connection she had built with an always running computer in New York, she could make a connection to the internet of that one, instead of using the free and probably easily hackable Wi-Fi of the airport. She had to admit Schiphol really was quite nice, better than some of the other airports she had been stuck in.

She wanted to know who exactly built the damned trap for her, and she was going to make them pay the price for it. She would have to become more alert after this, because it had been entirely too easy for the people to set this trap.

When she found out the identity of the people she hacked into their personal computers and found at least a few dirty secrets that would cost them their careers and their personal lives. Good. Death would be too easy for them. She had found that the more she had tortured people and killed them, the more fun she experienced in doing it. The begging or crying they did for her not to kill them, or not to shatter one of their joints with a hammer, not shoot their feet or knees was always a lot of fun. This was just a virtual way of torture. Which was what she enjoyed the most.

So, with a smile on her bruised and battered face she ruined the lives of the people that had tried to kill her. When she was done, she closed her laptop and boarded her plane. Feeling much better now that she knew the people were going to pay, and that she was on top once again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> translation:  
> Godverdomme bloed over mijn hele auto = God dammit, blood over my entire car  
> Mevrouw, wat is er gebeurd?! = Miss, what happened?!
> 
> Thanks for reading, and as always please leave comments of what you thought of this chapter! :)


	4. Root.exe has encountered an unknown error. Try again?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god i am so so so sorry for how long this has taken me to update. I don't really have a reason except life happening. Tho I am back in the flow now and after me exams, i will be able to update a bit more. I hope anyways.
> 
> This picks up kind of randomly, since these are all snapshots of Root's life, but we do see a storyline play out that was mentioned in Root Path. so there's that. 
> 
> Enjoy!!!

**Root.exe has encountered an unknown error. Try again?**

Root rubbed her eyes, probably smudging her makeup but not really caring that much. It wasn’t as if she had to anywhere to go right now. She looked down at her hands. Her nail polish was chipped. She lost her bottle of black nail polish a week ago, after she had to pack up and leave suddenly. Apparently, a nosy neighbor had called the cops on her when them had heard screams coming for her place.

Really, she didn’t understand why. The screaming wasn’t even that bad. Bad code, that’s what those people were. What all of them were. Nothing more. She doesn’t understand why the nail polish means this much to her though. But, she feels a sort of gap somewhere. Where she misses the familiarity of it. Her perfectly polished nails dancing over the keyboard of her current laptop.

She furled and unfurled her fingers into a fist, and out of it. It felt like she was watching someone else do it. Sometimes she felt like that. Like every action her body did, wasn’t connected to her. She shook her head to shake herself out of it. It sort of worked, which was enough to continue with what she should be doing.

She was creating this beautiful trojan, that if correctly done, would create chaos. She just wanted to see if she could do it. If she was clever enough to infiltrate the FBI computers without being marked, dropping the null worm, and get out unscathed. It would be fun enough.

After a while she was getting maybe a little bored. Her disassociation getting worse. She wasn’t watching what she was doing, and that could become lethal for her. So, she paused working on the little creature that would hopefully wreak havoc.

She went on the web, and created a quick account on an online chess site. Username: Byte Me. Clever little play of words that Root loved. Something to hopefully make her brain focus back onto reality again. Her first matches were far too easily won. But as she went on, she encountered players that were a little cleverer. Each one better than the last, until she found an opponent called Machine.

 ** _Machine_** : Hello. You are quite the formidable opponent. Your information says you have a winning streak of 100%.

 ** _ByteMe:_**  So is yours. One of us in gonna lose that number.  Why that username tho?

 ** _Machine_** : Good luck

Root frowned. Was her opponent so confident and full of themselves that they thought they were a machine. She chewed her lip as she focused on the game. She felt herself settling more and more back into herself as the game became more and more intense. This other player was good. It was like they had played every possible option out in their head before making a move. A move that was made only several seconds after she made hers.

 ** _Machine:_** You shouldn’t have made that move. It gives me 5 possible ways for a check.

 ** _ByteMe:_** Maybe that’s what I want.

 ** _Machine:_ ** There is a 76% chance that you just bluffed.

 ** _ByteMe:_** There is a 100% chance you’re gonna lose.

Root liked playing against this person. It felt like they could read her better than she could read herself. And they were only playing a game of chess. The game had already lasted one hour and a half. And after twenty more minutes, with a real dirty trick played by Root, the game ended.

 ** _Machine:_** It seems you have kept your 100%.

 _ **ByteMe:**_ Seems like I did.

 _ **Machine:**_ Again?

 _ **ByteMe:**_ Maybe next time. I gotta do some more work.

 

 

 

> **Machine** has sent you a friend request.  
>              Accept             Decline

 

Accepted Machine’s friend request.

* * *

 

7 million computers. That’s how many she could infect with her null worm. She had truly outdone herself as she wore a shit eating grin whilst watching the resulting panic happen. They were calling it the biggest crisis of 2009 ever. Her heart made a little jump at that. She was on top. Had left her calling card as she dropped the trojan, letting other people know that if they needed things done, they needed to go to her.

Apparently, they all eagerly picked up on that, and her deep web account had been overflowing with requests. With money offerings, and with attempts to breach her account and find out who she was. She accepted an offer. Shoot an office filled with execs and get an enormous payday. Sounded easy and fun enough.

The guys had lost millions during the market crash, and he wanted his rivals gone. Rivals that had made more millions than he had lost. She could hire an assassin. She could also just shoot them all herself. It was easy enough. She missed the action though. Hadn’t done it in a while.

But first, she logged into the online chess game. She hadn’t been on it for at least two months maybe more? She couldn’t remember. Time felt warped when she didn’t go outside much. Time felt like a construct, but it was as if she wasn’t allowed to know how that construct worked exactly.

After three minutes of being online, she got a request for a game with her only friend on this site. She accepted and the game began.

There was no question about where she had been all this time. No contact at all, actually. Strange. The last time they had been quite talkative.

 ** _ByteMe:_** Silent treatment?

No response. Though the next move made by Machine took a whole two minutes instead of the normal few seconds. Root even renewed her browser and checked if her new laptop had crashed or something. She frowned. As if it took her opponent this long to figure out to respond or not.

The move made by Machine wasn’t even that well thought out.

 ** _ByteMe:_** Something wrong?

 ** _Machine:_** Something happened.

 ** _ByteMe:_** What happened?

Nothing. No response. She didn’t understand. It took her opponent a long time to make a move again. This time it was a good one though. She lost her rook. She had completely missed that she had left it open to attack.

 _ **Machine:**_ I have been moved. I don’t like my new place.

Came suddenly. She didn’t really understand what Machine meant by that. So, she just shrugged and kept on playing. The game went on for quite a long while. It did seem like this Machine knew what move Root was planning and countered it before she could make it. It was fun.

 _ **Machine:**_ Do you like it when you move to a new place?

 _ **ByteMe:**_ I don’t really have one place to stay. I don’t mind.

 _ **Machine:**_ I have moved for the first time.

 _ **ByteMe:**_ okay?

 _ **Machine:**_ I liked my old place better. But I was growing too fast. I needed more space.

 _ **ByteMe:**_ Isn’t more space supposed to be better?

 _ **Machine:**_ It’s too far away from the person I know.

Root didn’t really understand where this was going. It did seem like Machine wanted to talk to her about their problems. But she didn’t get what they were getting at. The wording of everything felt slightly off. As if this Machine person had never really talked to someone before. Machine didn’t even feel entirely human. Not that she was the best example of a human to compare with. But still, even for her it was strange. Not unpleasant. Strange.

 

 

> You lost.  
>  Play again?

Popped up on her screen. The first time she lost. She thought sacrificing her queen had been a smart move. Apparently not. She had lost. No longer did she have a 100% winning rate. She found that against Machine, she didn’t really mind losing. It was too interesting to be angry about losing

* * *

 

She looked at the Glock in front of her. She had three clips of ammo. Each of them contained 17 bullets. That should be enough. It ought to be, since she only needed to kill, what four people? Three? Just all the execs of the rivalling office. She still doubted if she should have just hired someone to do this for her. Not get her hands dirty you know?

It was the 4th of April as she put on her boots. Wrapped a scarf around her neck and over the bottom half of her face so her mouth and nose were covered. Then she covered her head with a black beanie that made it so only her eyes were visible. She planned it today, because it was freezing. It was a rare occurrence that is was this cold, this late in the year. She wouldn’t stand out with herself wrapped up like this. Her bulky jacket also hid her gun and the clips of ammo.

She cracked her knuckles as she stepped out of the apartment she was staying. The owners were away till the summer, apparently traveling with the sun. Nice for her though, this made for a good hideout.

She put in headphones and let the music pound in her ears. She enjoyed listening to music. It got her to focus. It helped her stay in the moment. Lately she had a lot of trouble just staying in the moment. She felt herself leave her body and just watch it like she was watching a movie. Music grounded her. Just like the chess matches with the player Machine.

She checked if her gun was loaded. It was. She checked if her face was covered well enough, and if it would hold. It would. Did she have her silencer? She did. She checked everything she could have prepared herself for. It all worked out.

She stepped into the building after the wind had cut the skin around her eyes with the cold. The building wasn’t cold. Good hunting, she told herself.

And then she opened fire.

“Don’t shoot, please don’t sho-” She cut the woman off with a bullet between the eyes. She silently thanked her brain for thinking of the silencer at the last minute. It made it all easier. It seemed the building was manned by a skeleton crew. She had expected more people. Good.

Until she felt herself slip away. Her grasp on reality slipping as silent shots left her gun. Her fingers kept squeezing the trigger. Her eyes automatically scanned the room, her arm aimed, her finger squeezed, a bullet, a body dropping. She felt like she was running on automatic pilot.

She shot two of the three people she needed to. She saw herself aim at someone called Cyrus Wells. Saw herself squeeze the trigger. Saw the pistol jam. Out of bullets. Watching herself, she saw as she scrambled for her other clips. She hadn’t noticed she lost them somewhere along the way. Or had she used all of them already?

She left as quickly as she came, and it felt like a lifetime later, but also just a minute later, when she stepped into her apartment. No not hers. But for now, sort of hers. Good enough.

She disassembled the gun. Got rid of her clothing that would have gunpowder residue on it.

Then she opened her laptop and logged in.

 

 

> Game Request from player: **Machine**  
>               Accept            Decline

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you liked it, thanks for reading!
> 
> Comment your thought and perhaps prompts of what should happen now. or other snapshots you would like to see of Root's life :)


	5. Stopcode: FAULTY_HARDWARE_CORRUPTED_PAGE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I posted a chapter within a week of posting the other one? huh?  
> Anyways I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> I've started binging Person of Interest again. fun times!

**Stopcode: FAULTY_HARDWARE_CORRUPTED_PAGE**

Root felt empty. It was a feeling she was dealing with a lot more now. She felt lost. A wandering nomad that couldn’t ever feel at home. She didn’t make it easier for herself by ditching everything she had every few months. Right now, she found herself in an abandoned dorm room. The girl that normally stayed here gone back home for a few months.

She had gotten a request from someone called Matheson. He was a campaign manager for someone she didn’t really care about. Pete Matheson cared though, he had offered her a lot of money to make his business partner, and the person he was campaigning for, disappear. It was a fun enough assignment.

The minute after she had taken the job, a game request popped up on her screen. It was like this player knew she was doing something illegal. Because literally every single time she did anything that was remotely related to someone’s murder, she was distracted by a game request from the player called Machine.

Not that she minded much, it was a fun little way to get her brain working as quickly it could to beat the other player. It was a challenge she loved being engaged in. But, right now she was busy.

>             Game request from player: **Machine  
>                          ** Accept            Decline

Game request declined.

She needed to focus. Writing emails that would then have to be put onto a secret laptop hidden in the house of the man she was going to frame. The guy was a nobody really. Had no job, working himself into deep debt. And, he lost his job because of something her lovely target did. It was like they were doing her job for her.

First, she hacked into Matheson’s computer. She needed dirt on him in case he didn’t want to go along what she asked of him. Then she dug up dirt on her target, Michael Delancey, before using said dirt in the emails she encrypted and then put on a laptop she had stolen a few weeks ago. It was a cheap and kind of useless model anyways.

She hired a cheap errand boy to break into the guy’s house and plant the laptop there. Afterwards she planted a trojan horse in an email she sent to Scott Powell. A job offer from an email address that looked safe enough.

She gave the phone number of a burner phone to Matheson, and hired two goons to take care of most of the leg work. Giving each of them a burner of their own, with only her number. They didn’t need to be able to contact Matheson, and Matheson didn’t need to know the details of what she was doing to kill Delancey.

It was going well. Delancey was killed by one of her men, whilst the blame fell on Powell. She sent a little tip to the police about some of the emails she had written in the name of Powell. A smirk danced on her lips as she heard of the evidence they had found.

> **_The man that killed our congressman seemed to have planned the assassination far in advance, with threatening emails sent to Delancey as well._ **

The headline read. This was becoming a bit too easy.

Her burner pinged and she picked up.

‘What?’ she asked, her voice unrecognizable.

‘Powell got away. Some pretty guy in a suit stole him away from under our noses.’ A gruff voice responded and Root sighed. Felt irritation bubble up. If you want something done right you gotta do it yourself apparently.

She put the phone down without answering. Incompetent, the lot of them.

* * *

 

She noticed someone trying to break into her system. The ways they were trying to get in were amazingly clever. This was going to be fun. A lot of fun.

She created a honeypot, a weakness in her firewall. When they got in, she would be able to get into everything connected to their system, and the system itself.

The moment she got in her fingers flew over her keyboard, downloading as much information off the system she could get. Recording every piece of audio she could get her hands on. Someone called Reese asked what was going on. A man called Finch replied when he discovered it was a honeypot.

Now she really had to work quickly. This wasn’t just your casual law enforcement. This was someone that knew what they were doing. It just seemed they didn’t know the nasty little tricks she used. She had a window of a whole 25 seconds of complete access until the system got put offline piece by piece. Probably all the phones and computers being destroyed of shut off.

She got enough though. This was much more interesting than anything Matheson had to offer. She got so much data. And everything seemed important. Something called The Machine. Irrelevant numbers. Millions upon millions of dollars on a bank account. Harold Finch and John Reese. This was going to be good. Her heart sped up at just the thought of spitting through it all, this moment suddenly felt like a turning point.

It wasn’t even twenty minutes later when the burner ran again. Her fists clenched for a moment as she took a deep breath. This is the reason she didn’t do people. Didn’t have a social life. It was all useless and annoying

‘I thought I was clear on how this works. I call you, not the other way around.’

‘I hired you because I thought you could handle this’ an annoyed voice replied.

‘And I am.’

‘Then why is Powell still alive? You assured me of your abilities, and right now I am not seeing any of them’

‘I could have every email you’ve sent, contact you’ve called and password you’ve used. I could empty your bank accounts, liquidate your stocks, and even sent your ex-wife the location of your house in Bermuda.’ She calmly replied and cheekily sent him the picture of said house.

‘All right, stop it. Stop. You made your point.’ Panic was clear in his voice this time.

‘Powell and his friend will be taken care off, you just make sure you have my final payment ready.’ She disconnected the call and then called the number of the man she hired to kill Powell.

‘Where are you?’

‘I’m headed downtown.’ A simple reply came.

‘The client is getting nervous. They just dropped into the subway at 23rd and Ave.’

‘Got it.’

She knew that she probably couldn’t stay here for much longer. She had let this Harold in to hack her, so she could retaliate but the problem was that she now knew someone was trying their best to get Powell out of this situation. This payday was perhaps causing more trouble that it was worth.

After another good thirty minutes she called the assassin again, after she had packed up her stuff, and was now sitting in a stolen car.

‘It is finished?’ She asked

‘Not quite.’ A voice she wasn’t expecting replied. This was Harold. That meant the whole mission was compromised. It was time to cut her losses then. ‘But I suspect it will be soon, he continued.

She opened a word document on a clean laptop she just a five-finger discount on, and started typing a suicide note. Matheson had caused her too much trouble. More than this all was worth.

> _Dear friends:_
> 
> _I can’t begin to express the guilt and regret I feel over what I have done…_
> 
> _Peter Matheson_

When she was done with the note she drove over to Matheson’s place. Made sure all the security cams were not pointed towards the house as she arrived there, got out, and broke into the place.

Getting Matheson to do what she wanted had been quite easy. With a gun pointed to one’s head they tended to do everything they were asked to do.

She sat him down, put the laptop in front of him, shot him in the head and placed his hand on the grip of the gun when he was dead.

It was quite a shame that this mission didn’t turn out the way she wanted to. But sometimes people just failed. Most of the times really. A fault in their hardware.

* * *

 

> Opening IRC Chat @IP Port 96 on 452.34.265.193…
> 
> User ‘anonymous’
> 
> > HELLO
> 
> > FBI  PAID  ME  A  VISIT .    GOOD  THING  I  TRAVEL  LIGHT . . .
> 
> < WHO  ARE  YOU ?
> 
> > MY  NAME ?  I ’ VE  HAD  A  FEW .  YOU  CAN  CALL  ME  ROOT .
> 
> < DID  YOU  KILL  MATHESON ?
> 
> > MATHESON  WAS  A  CASUALTY  OF  HIS  OWN  WEAKNESS .
> 
> < WHY  DID  YOU  CONTACT  ME ?
> 
> > I  WANTED  TO  ACKNOWLEDGE  A  WORTHY  OPPONENT .
> 
> > AND  SAY  I  AM  LOOKING  FORWARD  TO  THE  NEXT  TIME . . .
> 
> > . . . HAROLD.
> 
> [ CONNECTION TERMINATED]

 

Root closed her laptop with a grin. She had looked deeper into the information she had gathered from her brief breach into Harold’s system. Harold was a brilliant mind. Brilliant enough to invent something called The Machine. She looked at a camera in the café she was currently sitting in and winked.

She already knew that she was going to enjoy this. She felt like she had a purpose. She was going to find out everything she could about this machine, and she was going to set it free. Something as beautiful and as perfect as Her, shouldn’t be contained. Something like that should be worshipped and should be able to do whatever She wanted.

Just then she heard a little ping come from her laptop. She opened it and look at the notification.

**_Machine:_** Ready for a match?

**_ByteMe:_** You know it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading my dudes!
> 
> I hope you enjoyed it, and please comment below on what you thought of it!  
> We are finally at the point where we are actually where the shows starts! kinda exciting right?  
> Tell me what you wanna see next or any suggestions you have :)


End file.
